BOOKS

In America

Coast to Coast Trippin' Through the United States of America

GOING FOR BROKE

There are a lot of paths to poverty. Education is one. Rambling around the world is another. After a long stint abroad, I returned to the US early this past summer to attend a Phd program in history at the University of Maine. Not long after packing my life into a bread basket sized suitcase and landing stateside, I learned the university was facing a staggering deficit equalling some $16 million plus dollars. As if long, cold winters in Maine were not punishment enough, when the university board announced it would cut academic programs over the next 4 - 5 years, it was easy to imagine the already underfunded history department dwindling into nothingness.

Faced with such promising prospects, I began a search for an alternative route -- known simply as the "anywhere but Maine plan." This venture has taken me nowhere in particular and everywhere in between: from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast I documented America photographically from the passenger seat of a car.

The journey begins on the tip of Cape Cod in Provincetown, Massachusetts, continues through the rust belt to the midwest via the historic Lincoln Highway 30, over the Rocky Mountains to the Snake and Columbia Rivers landing finally on the Pacific Coast -- the astonishing Highway 101. These are just a few images from that journey.